I Fight the DJ

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

How do you fund the construction of a Mormon temple? By having Native Americans yank their gold fillings out of their mouths. Sound familiar?

The Mormon church has two versions of this story. The first can be found in the May 9, 1998 edition of Church News:

[Faust] emphasized the need to sacrifice for temple building and shared how members in Argentina found ways to donate during the construction of the São Paulo Brazil Temple. They gave the gold from their dental work to help pay for the temple. He said that he had purchased some of the gold fillings for more than the market price to share with congregations the nature of the sacrifice made by these members.

The sanitized version minimizes not only Faust's involvement but also lies about the amount of gold fillings Native Americans had ripped from their mouths. It can be found here:

One memorable donation was a gold dental bridge presented by an Argentine man to a pair of missionaries. They declined the gift at first, saying they couldn't take the man's teeth, but he responded, "You can't deny me the blessings I will receive by giving this to the Lord for his temple." Elder James E. Faust, who was serving as the South America area supervisor for the Church, heard the story and paid a generous sum of money for the gold. From that day on, he kept the dental bridge as a reminder of the Saints' countless sacrifices.

And we've come full circle. Here is the building built on a racist foundation derived from a lousy work of fiction written by a gold-digging con man and funded by the extracted gold fillings of the indigent brown heathens Mormons so loathe. Would Smith be proud or envious?

Monday, July 28, 2014

"Reparative/conversion/reorientation therapy" is not only torture built on junk science, bigotry, homophobia and violence, it also beats into the victim the incorrect notion that there is something fundamentally flawed with who they are. Fuck the assholes who came up with this bullshit idea!

For YEARS BYU conducted "experiments" on young gay men to try to "cure" them of a non-existent illness. These men had electrodes placed on their genitals, and they were shown various pornographic images. If they became aroused "inappropriately" (measured by this device patented by Robert Card) they received electric shocks to their genitals. Some were given drugs that caused them to vomit if they became "inappropriately" aroused.

All these kids were trying to do was to become "good" Mormons so they could reach exaltation in the Celestial Kingdom. They wanted to be "normal." They wanted to fit into the rigid Mormon mold by which all members are confined. Why couldn't they be free? No Mormon in good standing is free, but these young people were not only alienated by fellow members, but they were also tortured in the name of God. Amen.

Affirmation discusses Evergreen and has several links to more in-depth articles and first-person accounts by people who have been involved in Evergreen as "patients" and as leaders.

Here are some videos (courtesy of antideity at YouTube) of interviews with gay men who underwent the torture "therapy" at BYU. Know that Evergreen is still in business, and the electroshock torture continued waaay past the 70s when the LDS church claims it halted the practice.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

For all their own whining about persecution, those Mormon @$$-Holy-O's sure know how to stick it to everyone else. Now we have Mormon @$$-Holy-O's rampaging across the country making everyone else's home state a stinking hole of Mormon values, just like theirs.

If you see a hole when you’re crossing the road and you fall into it, who is responsible for that — you or the hole?

For my first 23 years, adherence to Mormonism and its whack-job rituals determined my entire existence.

Sundays were occupied in ritual remembrance of Jesus’ apocryphal ritual suicide. OMG...again? The guy died 2,000 years ago—get over it already!

In their temples, Holocaust victims' spirits were rescued for eternity through ritual holy handshakes and through-the-veil groping. So were the spirits of all their Nazi murderers. "We interrupt you for this short announcement: The Final Solution is now being played out in Planet Kolob's Celestial City. All interested bigots, please report there immediately. Thank you."

The common cold, mental disturbances, and various other maladies, ailments, addictions and afflictions were magically “cured” through ritual incantations: rancid olive oil rubbed into the scalp, and a half-hearted prayer muttered by some uncaring half-worthy Peter Penishood...boy! I feel better already!

But I had a condition no amount of ritual could cure. A condition, it turned out, that was so diabolically natural, common and benign that, having been trapped, bound, and blinded by the craven irrationality of Mormon ritual, I turned myself inside out and damn near almost killed myself trying to excise it. Until one day when I understood that I must choose between living an insane obsessive-compulsive neurosis, or just simply living. My condition fixed me: I stepped sideways and avoided that hole in the road.

Heterosexual Mormons try to claim that being gay is a lifestyle choice, but as with so many other things they’re too Mormy-centric and 19th-century and ignorant and sheltered to know what the hell they’re talking about. The decision is not whether one will be gay or heterosexual. There's no deciding those things.

The choice which must be made is whether or not one will live an authentic life.

Throw the Mormon church out and start living beautifully. Life is too short for stupid ugly junk.

And flattopSF went forth and lived in this garden known as the Real World, wherein were placed all manner of fruits, flowers, and vegetation. Of every tree of the garden flattopSF freely ate.

And of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, flattopSF did taste of some of the fruit of that tree. In fact, he did taste of extra-large portions in abundance.

And yea, he found that it was delicious to the taste and very desirable. And yea, then it came to pass that flattopSF realized with a surety that Mormon doG was a goddamned liar, for in that very first taste he knew there was nothing wrong with the gay existence of flattopSF.

Life became worth living. And let me tell you, it's been good. I have been blessed beyond my dreams. But one day...:

One day in 2001 I was on the phone with my mother and had just run down the list of the Mormons’ anti-gay campaigns across the nation...Alaska, Hawai'i, Vermont, and California, with Proposition 22—the “Knight Initiative”. I spelled out how much of her tithing money it had cost.

She said: "That is a lie."

I said: "Excuse me, did you just call me a liar?"

The phone got real quiet for about a minute.

She said: "Yes. That is a lie."

I said: "That's the second time in my life you've called me a liar. It just proves the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is up to, doesn't it? I didn't know you were in the habit of reading the investigative articles in the San Francisco and Los Angeles newspapers [she lives in the Midwest]."

She said: "I'm not and I don't need to, to know what I know. I don't believe they're doing what you said they did. You're just making these things up to start fights with us whenever you call. They got up in church and read a statement telling us that we should love our homosexual family members."

I said: "Since when do you need permission from your church to love your own son?"

I knew then my mother had abandoned her son for her church. A couple of months later I received an extremely manipulative 12-page letter from her, and never heard from her again.

Mormons tell me that if I run my life their way and succeed a little it’s through no virtue of my own: it’s because their god favored me. And I should have tried harder anyway. But if I run my life their way and fail it’s my own fault: I’m not worthy of success. Fucked without a kiss if I do, and fucked without a kiss if I don't. Subtext is everything when it comes to trying to understand the Mormon church.

Here’s what happened before I came out of the closet:

I sat through 23 years of Mormon Sacrament Meetings, Stake Conferences, and General Conference broadcasts during which I was gently and regularly reminded that people like me need to be beaten up for my own good (Packer. To Young Men Only. General Conference Priesthood Session, October 2, 1976). That loving another man made me worse than a murderer (Kimball. Miracle of Forgiveness. Bookcraft, 1969). That I was better off dead (Kimball. Love Versus Lust. BYU Devotional, January 5, 1965).

My TBM older brother figured me out. Three times before I was 23 he tried to kill me with his fists, on the advice of the aforementioned church leaders. He failed. I guess his Mormon doG wasn't guiding his fists. I guess he must have been unworthy. Mormon doG works that way, you know. Pity. I decided I didn’t need to acknowledge TBM older brother's Pre-existence, his Present-existence, or his Post-existence. At all.

Here’s what happened after I came out of the closet:

My TBM mother went into deep-space orbit. We could send a NASA probe to Uranus a lot faster if we'd tied the spaceship to her anus. Tantrums. Pouting. More tantrums. Attempted manipulation. More tantrums. Whatever.

My TBM younger brother ran hot-and-cold for 15 years on whether I was an asset or a liability to his pathetic dating life. Can we say “conflicted”? After I paid for his wedding, I got dissed. Something about his new wife thinking “gay” was contagious.

Shunned or avoided by 90% of the Mormons I knew, even when I saw them on the street which was thankfully not often. I became the object of gossip and conjecture! I’m so glad I later had the opportunity to experience all the things they were saying I’d done already.

One TBM “friend” claimed "it doesn't matter!" Then she assumed that quitting the church and coming out of the closet meant I suddenly had no moral standards whatsoever, and took huge liberties with my generosity after she got herself unemployed, bankrupted, repossessed, and evicted. My response: "No, I can’t pay your bills for you. Especially since you're already living under my roof rent-free, eating my food and not contributing, and bar-hopping all night with your girlfriends, while I make sure your seventeen year-old son gets to work and school on time every morning. Buh-bye!"

Another TBM “friend” and his family re-edited all our conversations inside their own heads: apparently the word "gay" was miraculously blocked at the eardrum as they tried to emotionally blackmail me back into the church. They introduced me to several BYU co-eds under the assumption that one of them would instantly "cure" me. Failing that, he informed me that my lack of cooperation with his method of spiritual guidance was making him look bad to his kids. What the hell?!?<<click. dial tone>>